Dondukov

In 1732 he led 11,000 Kalmuck households from the Volga banks to the border of the Ottoman Empire at the Kuban River, asking the sultan for protection.

The new settlement, however, was ill-suited for grazing animals, so he petitioned Anna of Russia to return to the Volga as soon as the Russo-Turkish War, 1735-1739 erupted.

Of these children, the elder, Prince Aleksey Dondukov, was sent by Catherine the Great to govern Kalmykia and reigned as a puppet khan from 1762 until his death 19 years later.

Although he long remained Vice-President of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Mikhail Dondukov-Korsakov is best remembered by virtue of Pushkin's scurrilous epigram ridiculing his homosexual relationship with Count Uvarov.

His only son was Prince Alexander Mikhailovich Dondukov-Korsakov (1820–93) who rose to prominence fighting in the Caucasian War and in the Crimean campaign.